Cannibal committed for 60 years

Daniel Tepfer

Updated
6:28 am EDT, Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Tyree Smith listens to testimony during his trial in Bridgeport Superior Court, in Bridgeport, Conn. on, July 8th, 2013. Superior Court judge John Kavanewsky ordered Smith committed to the state’s maximum security psychiatric hospital in Middletown for up to 60 years for the murder of Angel "Tun Tun" Gonzalez. less

Tyree Smith listens to testimony during his trial in Bridgeport Superior Court, in Bridgeport, Conn. on, July 8th, 2013. Superior Court judge John Kavanewsky ordered Smith committed to the state’s maximum ... more

Tyree Smith listens to testimony during his trial in Bridgeport Superior Court, in Bridgeport, Conn. on, July 8th, 2013. Superior Court judge John Kavanewsky ordered Smith committed to the state’s maximum security psychiatric hospital in Middletown for up to 60 years for the murder of Angel "Tun Tun" Gonzalez. less

Tyree Smith listens to testimony during his trial in Bridgeport Superior Court, in Bridgeport, Conn. on, July 8th, 2013. Superior Court judge John Kavanewsky ordered Smith committed to the state’s maximum ... more

BRIDGEPORT -- A Florida man who hacked a homeless man to death and then ate his brain and eyeballs stunned a courtroom Monday when he got up and apologized.

"I'm really sorry for what I did, that I couldn't be myself," Tyree Lincoln Smith told the three-judge panel considering his fate. "It really had nothing to do with the other person."

In the back of the courtroom a relative of victim Angel "Tun Tun" Gonzalez, burst into tears.

"We waited two years to hear Tyree say he was sorry," said Talitha Frazier, who was wearing a T-shirt with Gonzalez's photograph. "What he said today caught me off-guard, but I feel he meant what he said."

Despite the apology, the panel committed Smith to up to 60 years in the state's maximum security psychiatric hospital in Middletown.

Superior Court judges John Kavanewsky, John Blawie and Maria Kahn could have ordered Smith released after they found him not guilty of murder by reason of insanity in July. "It is overwhelmingly clear that his discharge from custody would constitute a danger to himself and others," ruled Kavanewsky.

"He poses a significant danger to himself and the community," psychiatric social worker Julie Jacobs testified Monday. She urged the judges to commit him.

"I am concerned there is an expectation he (Smith) would do this to other people if he was allowed to be free," State's Attorney John Smriga said."

Following a three-day trial in July, the three judges ruled Smriga had proved the 35-year-old Smith killed Gonzalez on Dec. 15, 2011, and cannibalized the victim's body. They also found that the defense lawyer, Joseph Bruckmann, had proved his client was insane at the time.

Smith grew up in Bridgeport and Ansonia and later lived in California and Florida.

During the trial Smith's cousin, Nicole Rabb, testified that in December 2011 Smith had showed up at her door talking about Greek gods and ruminating about needing to go out and get blood. When she saw him the next evening she noticed what appeared to be specks of blood on his pants and that he was carrying chopsticks and a bloody axe.

Rabb said she kicked Smith out of her Seaview Avenue apartment after he told her he had killed a man with the axe and then ate the man's brain and eyeballs in the Lakeview Cemetery, washing the parts down with sake. She said he told her he intended to eat more people here.

A month later, police found Gonzalez's mutilated body in the vacant apartment on Brooks Street where Smith had lived as a child.

Police later recovered the bloody axe and an empty bottle of sake in a stream bed off Boston Avenue.

The defense's case rested mainly on the testimony of Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Reena Kapoor. She testified that Smith retained his lust for human flesh after his arrest -- even offering to eat her.

Kapoor claimed that Smith suffered from psychotic incidents since childhood and heard voices that told him to kill people. She said the voices ordered Smith to eat the victim's brain so they would get a better understanding of human behavior and the eyes so that they could see into the "spirit realm."